


Choose Your Faces Wisely

by Poetry



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Character Study, Daemon Touching, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Jewish Good Omens (Good Omens), Other, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, the rewards of being loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-25 16:02:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20028514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: In a world where humans wear their souls on the outside, Crowley and Aziraphale learn to make their own.





	Choose Your Faces Wisely

**Author's Note:**

> Dæmons are referred to as daimons in this fic, to avoid confusion with demons like Crowley. [Daimon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_\(classical_mythology\)) is the original term from Plato’s Apology that Pullman got the word and concept for dæmon from.
> 
> Thank you to @chromatographic, @augustales, and @c-rowlesdraws for the help on this.

##  **I.**

Under the shelter of Aziraphale’s wing, Crawly said, “I don’t get what’s so bad about them knowing the true forms of their daimons, either. They’re quite nice if you ask me. Fitting.”

Aziraphale watched through the dim distortion of the rain as Adam and Eve fled the lion. Eve was accompanied by a wild goat, sure-footed in the sand, and Adam sheltered his butterfly daimon from the rain with one hand while wielding Aziraphale’s sword in the other, its flames untouched by the storm.

“If they hadn’t eaten of the fruit, their daimons could still become elephants, or lions, and they wouldn’t be in such terrible danger,” Aziraphale said, remembering how fragile the butterfly had looked on Adam’s cheek when he’d given him the sword.

“S’pose it’s not in their true natures to be lions,” Crawly said, and Aziraphale thought with a pang of longing that it would be nice to know that it wasn’t in one’s nature to be a lion.

No. Crawly had tempted the humans into knowing good and evil, and the true forms of their daimons, so it had to be a bad thing. Aziraphale mustn’t forget it.

##  **II.**

Aziraphale flew and flew and flew, trying to scour the smell of burning cities from his wings. He didn’t stop until he was back to Ur. But before he landed on the walls, he spotted a familiar red-haired figure well outside the gates, clad as a woman in a dark flax skirt and shawl. He landed well back from her, so she wouldn’t get the dust cloud in her eyes – it only seemed polite.

“Crawly,” he said. “You’ve got a snake.”

“I heard about Sodom and Gomorrah,” she said, “and thought you might be back. I’m here to show you how to blend in. You can’t go around looking like that after a lot of angels have burnt two cities to ash, the humans will faint in terror.”

“They deserved it,” Aziraphale said, as much to convince himself as anyone else. “They were _ horribly _ rude to Gabriel and Sandalphon.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure every last man, woman, and child in those nasty cities deserved to be melted into slag. Not my point. Put the wings away and think up a daimon.” She stroked the head of the black serpent draped over her shoulders, to punctuate her point.

“Or turned into pillars of salt,” Aziraphale muttered. He _ had _ warned Edith and Lot and their daughters not to look back, and if only Edith’s Bumah hadn’t swiveled his little owl head for one last glimpse of their home – well. It was too late now. But why was Crawly so concerned all of a sudden? “Is this a trick, fiend? Are you trying to get me to disguise my ethereal nature so you might – hide the celestial light under a bushel?”

Crawly gestured laconically behind her. There had been guards at the gate, Aziraphale recalled. Now there were only scattered spears and shields and a lingering dust cloud. “Neither of us can get our jobs done if all the humans in Ur flee in terror before you. Like it or not, angels have a reputation now. Put them away, Aziraphale.” He did. That part he knew how to do. “Good,” Crawly said, wrapping the end of the serpent’s tail around her wrist. “And now a daimon, if you would.”

Aziraphale could see how the serpent was made – it was manifested as a part of Crawly’s corporation, like her hair and clothing. It was simple enough in principle. But in practice, Aziraphale was frozen with indecision. What sort of animal would be angelically appropriate? A dove? A unicorn, perhaps? But of course it didn’t matter. Aziraphale wasn’t human. He hadn’t eaten of the forbidden fruit. He could change the illusory manifestation of his “daimon” to any face he liked, if it didn’t suit him. So, on a whim, he chose a fluffy white ewe, with tiny wildflowers dotting her wool.

The corner of Crawly’s mouth quirked up. “Charming,” she said, turning back toward the gate. “Welcome to Ur.”

  


##  **III.**

Aziraphale came to watch the Crucifixion for the same reason he watched the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Flood. If he was to be an agent of the Almighty on Earth, he ought to bear witness to the consequences of Her judgments, no matter how terrible. And anyway, he had _ liked _ Jesus and his little dove Zipporah, very much. So, at the appointed time, he tied up his hair in a turban and manifested a sheepdog daimon, fluffy white with tan splotches, and a leather band around its neck inscribed with angel wings. He kept its ears and tail suitably downcast, feeling quite cast down himself.

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised at all when Crawly appeared, robed and veiled with that same black serpent like a scarf along her arms. “Come to smirk at the poor bugger, are you?”

“Smirk? Me?” The thought was repulsive.

“Well, your lot put him on there.”

“I’m not consulted on policy decisions, Crawly.” 

“Oh, I’ve changed it.”

“What?”

“My name. I didn’t like it. Too squirming at your feet-ish.” Aziraphale looked pointedly at the serpent draped over her shoulders, and she clutched at it defensively. “Well, she doesn’t creep on the ground, does she?”

“So what is now? Mephistopheles? Asmodeus?”

“Crowley.” Then the serpent lifted her head from the crook of Crowley’s arm and said, “And I’m Lilith.”

Aziraphale startled. “You don’t have to pretend she’s real around me.”

“Seems only proper,” Crowley said, “given the circumstances.” She inclined her head toward the cross.

They’d tied Zipporah’s little legs together with twine, like a dove brought to the temple for sacrifice, and hung her upside down around Jesus’s neck. They talked a little longer, as they hammered the last of the nails in, and when they hauled him up, Zipporah fluttered her wings and strained upward, as if to fly away to Heaven, but the twine around her legs tethered her, and she fell back, exhausted. She summoned enough strength to rub her head against his chest, once, then went terribly limp.

Aziraphale reached down to touch the top of the sheepdog’s head, buried his fingers in softness, and tried to imagine it. Not only to suffer, but to watch one’s own dear soul suffer, and be prevented from doing anything about it. He looked sideways at Crowley, who looked up at the cross and held the back of Lilith’s head to her lips, as if in a benedictory kiss.

Yes, perhaps it was proper. Given the circumstances.

##  **IV.**

“And what are we going to do while we wait for the next incredibly tiresome orgy?” said a voice in the Roman tavern that was almost, but not quite, familiar.

“Drink,” said another voice that was clearly identifiable as Crowley. “What else is there to do?”

Aziraphale looked up from his idle pastime and saw Crowley at the bar, garbed rather shoddily as a Roman man, with the head of his usual black serpent daimon poking up from the back of his toga. He ordered a jug of “whatever you think is drinkable.”

Aziraphale and his daimon – a she-wolf now, as that was the way one earned immediate respect in Rome – came over to the bar, intrigued. “Crowley?” The serpent glared at him. “And Lilith, of course,” he added. “Fancy running into you here. Were you just talking to yourself?”

“I was talking to Lilith,” Crowley said. “’S perfectly normal, talking to your daimon.”

“I never picked up the habit,” Aziraphale said. “What do you talk about?”

“Oh, you know. Devilish new torments.” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows. “Anything, really. Just keeps the loneliness at bay, sometimes. Don’t you ever get lonely?” Crowley gestured around at the busy tavern. “With all the humans coming and going?”

Aziraphale’s she-wolf rested her head on the seat next to Crowley’s and looked up at him with bright blue eyes. She was light tan, and still had the angel-wing leather band. She said, “Of course,” quite startling Aziraphale himself. 

Lilith gave a hiss not unlike a cat’s pleased purr, emerged from Crowley’s toga to wrap around a leg of his chair, and _ petted _ the she-wolf behind the ear with the end of her tail, like a human might pet a friendly dog. Aziraphale felt his face heating. “I thought I’d try Petronius’s new restaurant,” he said. “I heard he does remarkable things to oysters.”

“I’ve never eaten an oyster,” Crowley said, looking at his mug of beer instead of Aziraphale. Lilith was tucked neatly around the chair leg, as if she had never been otherwise. 

“Oh, well, let me tempt you to – “ Aziraphale smiled and flicked his eyes down to Lilith. He put his hand on the back of the she-wolf’s neck. “Oh. No, that’s your job, isn’t it?”

Crowley leaned back and smiled. Lilith said, “You’re not doing so badly at my job. Consider me tempted.”

##  **V.**

Unbeknownst to the other nuns, Aziraphale spent her nights reading and scribing holy texts as well as her days. After all the nuns were asleep, she got up from her bed, Edith stopped preening at her perch and flew to her shoulder, and they moved silently through the halls to the library. 

Tonight, she heard soft noises in the library. These after-hours disturbances were usually young nuns getting up to some sort of rules-breaking, sneaking strong beer or snogging each other, and Aziraphale always indulgently waved them on to continue breaking the rules somewhere else. But this wasn’t the giggling of mischievous young women. 

“Look at the state of this ledger. The tithes to the convent are definitely lining _ someone’s _ pockets. But whose?”

“What do you think, Lilith? The abbess! She’s ripe for more temptation, that one –”

Her swallow daimon flew ahead of her into the library, and Aziraphale swept in, ready to thwart whatever scheme Crowley was up to, and then –

She looked up from the convent ledger, startled. She was disguised as a noblewoman on a religious retreat, humbly dressed but still in fine cloth, her hair a vast red tumble of curls. But instead of a serpent draped over Crowley’s shoulders, Lilith was a humble brown sparrow perched on the table. Edith landed beside her, astonished, staring into the plain black beads of her eyes.

It was, Aziraphale realized, the first time she’d ever encountered Crowley and Lilith in private, with no one at all to put on an appearance for. And apparently, in private, Lilith was a sparrow.

“Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” Aziraphale quoted, softly. “But even the very hairs of your head all are numbered. Fear not, therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

Crowley bristled. “I’m not being _ biblical_. She did this before the Bible was even written. I wanted to know Lilith’s true nature, see what the fuss was all about, so I asked her. And this is what she turned into.” 

“But every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been a serpent,” Edith said, examining Lilith.

“And you’re something different every time I see you,” Lilith retorted with a click of her beak. “We’re not like humans, we don’t need to look like our true nature. And this,” she said, spreading her wings, “doesn’t really fit the demonic image, does it?”

“Do you know why,” Aziraphale said delicately, “this is Lilith’s true nature?”

“No,” Crowley said. She stroked a fingertip along Lilith’s spread wings, all pale brown. “It reminds me of…” She cut herself off, dropping her hand, and Edith smoothed a misaligned feather in Lilith’s wing with a precise stroke of her beak. 

“Have you been to the Tree of Souls?” Aziraphale said. 

“No,” Crowley said cautiously.

“Oh! You really must. It’s outside of Heaven and Hell. Come, I’ll show you.” Aziraphale snapped her fingers, and they were not in the convent anymore, but the velvety black of space. They were in their ethereal and occult forms, all essence and wings, floating among the branches of a cosmic Tree. From the Tree hung souls in uncountable billions, like stars. Each one was like a skein of two colored threads, the essences of human and daimon inextricably entwined. 

Perched in the canopy of the Tree of Souls was a vast flock of sparrows, plain and brown amidst the cosmic glory. As they watched, a soul trembled on its twig, and notes began to thrum in the throats of the sparrows, building to an ecstatic chorus as the soul fell to the Earth turning far below. Somewhere far away, a baby drew its first breath and began to cry – and the chorus fell to a resonant quiet. Then another soul fell, and the sparrows sang an entirely different song, just as beautiful. And another. And another.

“They do this for every soul that’s born,” Crowley said. “A different song for each one.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “And will keep on doing it for as long as humanity lasts, I suppose.”

“We were made before all of this. We didn’t get a welcome like this.”

“No,” said Aziraphale. “There was just Her love, as I recall. And a ringing, as if all of Creation were a bell.”

“That’s what I remember too,” Crowley said. 

Aziraphale snapped again, and they were back in the convent library. Crowley’s cheeks were streaked with tears. She cleared her throat, and Lilith became a serpent once more, slithering up her arm. “So. What were you doing in the library after hours, anyway?”

As it happened, Aziraphale had been curious about Edith’s true nature herself, not that she was ready to admit that to Crowley. “Well, I’ve been making a study of texts about daimons, so I might better understand the significance of the forms Edith takes. I’ve learned –”

“_ Edith _?” Crowley stared at the swallow daimon, an astonished smile spreading across her face. “You named your daimon after Lot’s wife, who disobeyed your direct order and got turned into a pillar of salt for it?”

“She didn’t _ mean _ to disobey.” Damn it, Aziraphale hadn’t meant to mention Edith’s name. “She swore she’d do as I said. But you should have seen that house, Crowley. She put so much love into it. She wove all the rugs and mended the shutters and swept the floors and picked up after her daughters. It was familiar, and she loved it, and she couldn’t help getting one last look at it. I never liked that nasty Lot, I mean can you _ imagine, _ offering up your daughters to a mob like that, but Edith never did anything wrong but love the place where she lived, and she got turned to a pillar of salt for it.” Crowley’s face was so open and admiring it hurt to look at it, especially with Lilith wearing that ridiculous demonic visage when she was really a lovely little sparrow. So Aziraphale looked at Edith instead. “Well. That’s ineffability for you. And I oughtn’t forget it.”

  


##  **VI.**

Aziraphale took a deep inhale of his sushi plate, and was utterly content. “I love moments like this, don’t you,” he murmured to Edith in his lap. “Excellent food, a chef who knows your name, no expectations or obligations…”

“A moment to ourselves,” Edith agreed lazily.

But then an all too familiar angelic presence manifested in the restaurant. Edith disappeared inside Aziraphale’s coat, and Aziraphale looked up reluctantly from his sushi. 

“Mind if I join you?” said Gabriel.

At least a millennium after Aziraphale, Gabriel and the other angels finally worked out that they would cause much less uproar on Earth if they manifested physical corporations that included daimons. Their daimons, however, still looked much like Edith had before the Flood: listless, dead-eyed facsimiles, going through the motions without any of the animation and interest of a true daimon. Gabriel manifested a leopard, because of _ course _he did, who stood eerily still beside him like a taxidermy.

“Where’s your…” Gabriel gestured toward the horrible leopard. 

The thing was, Edith never showed her true nature in front of others. It was _ private_. Edith wasn’t human, she didn’t have to show her true nature out in the open the way humans had to, and so she didn’t. Aziraphale knew that made him more cowardly than a human, and he accepted it. It even made him more cowardly than Crowley, who showed Lilith’s true form in the back of the bookshop, and he accepted that, too.

So it was terribly awkward for Gabriel to walk into the restaurant just when Aziraphale and Edith were cutting loose with a plate of sushi and her true form, respectively. Edith shifted inside his coat, and poked her head out from under his lapel as a salamander. “Right here,” she said gently, and Aziraphale thought at her, _ you cheeky thing, becoming a creature immune to hellfire. _

_ “ _Of course,” Gabriel said with his pasteboard smile. “Always so good at blending in with the locals.” He jabbed a finger at Aziraphale’s sushi plate. “Why do you consume that?”

“It’s sushi,” Aziraphale said, seized by a sudden wild urge to hide the sushi before Gabriel could smite it. “It’s nice. You dip it in soy sauce.” Edith flicked her tongue reprovingly as Gabriel grimaced, and the horrible leopard remained impassive. “It’s what humans do,” Aziraphale said, looking significantly at Edith and the leopard. “And if I am going to be living here among them… well. Keeping up appearances. Erm. Tea?”

“I do not sully the temple of my celestial body with gross matter,” Gabriel said.

“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “Nice suit.” His eyes flicked to the leopard again. _ Celestial body. _ Gabriel clearly didn’t consider the daimon to be a part of it. It had been over a millennium since Aziraphale could report Upstairs without including Edith in his celestial body. He just hid her as something small in his coat and bid her keep quiet, so the other angels wouldn’t comment, as they so liked to do. 

_ I wish Crowley and Lilith were here, _ Edith said silently. _ They’d make fun of that awful leopard. They’d say something very cutting, and we could not laugh at it, and disapprove. _

But Aziraphale wouldn’t say anything. He would keep Edith hidden in his coat, and do as he was told.

**VII.**

When Nanny Ashtoreth and Brother Francis had the day off, they made their way back to London separately (so as not to stir up gossip among the rest of the staff) and reconvened in the back of the bookshop with a bottle of wine or three.

Both of them were more conventionally attired, Aziraphale in his favorite togs with Edith disguised comfortably in his lap as a fine rainbow rooster, and Crowley with her hair unpinned and her sunglasses off and Lilith perched on the arm of the sofa as her sparrow self.

“Is Naamah meant to settle in some particular way?” Aziraphale asked, idly stroking the feathers under Edith’s chin. “A wyrm of some sort? She’s been trying out a lot of lizard-y forms lately, ever since I showed her and Warlock a slowworm in the garden.”

“Nothing in the Great Plan about that as far as I know,” Crowley said, holding up two fingers for Lilith to hop onto. “She’s just experimenting, angel. Normal for a young daimon. She might end up a lizard, might end up a kraken. Hopefully more like your regular garden lizard.”

“Is that what you did?” Edith asked Lilith. “Before you decided on the sparrow? Experiment?”

“Not really,” said Lilith, from atop the graceful pale arc of Crowley’s fingers. “You and I have worn whatever shapes we like for six thousand years. I wouldn’t call that experimenting. Crowley just asked me one day what I was, and… I was.” She spread her wings in demonstration. “How about you? How do you choose which face to wear?”

Edith shifted uncomfortably in Aziraphale’s lap. It hadn’t been like that for them. They’d studied the texts of daimonology for over a century, had come to some uncomfortable conclusions about Edith’s true nature, and had decided to keep those conclusions to themselves, for everyone’s safety and comfort. Though she had to admit that Lilith looked much more comfortable as a sparrow in Crowley’s hand that Edith felt as anything but her true self. “It’s mostly a matter of the image I’d like to present. Humans draw so many conclusions from the shape of one’s daimon. Supernatural entities, too, for that matter. I try to be a dove or a lamb or something, whenever Gabriel and the others come calling.”

“And now?” Lilith said, as Crowley bent her neck and slugged down the last of the wine in her glass. “Gabriel’s not watching. Why a rooster?”

“It pleases me,” Edith said. “All the nice colors, you know.”

“Vain creature,” Lilith said fondly. 

“Anything else you’d like to do on our day off?” Aziraphale said. 

“See a 15-rated film,” Crowley said. “With lots of swearing. And explosions.”

“You’re on your own, then,” Aziraphale said archly. “I’m going to see to the bookshop. And read.” 

##  **VIII.**

It felt so good to have his corporation back, and especially to have _ Edith _ back, and he wanted so much just to hold her in his hands, that Aziraphale forgot all of his reasons why he couldn’t show her true nature to Crowley and Lilith. So when they got on the empty bus back to London from Tadfield and slumped beside each other in the plastic seats, and Lilith slumped right out of her serpent form back into a sweet little sparrow on Crowley’s knee, Edith did the same, shedding her dove form and curling up in Aziraphale’s lap just as herself.

Crowley and Lilith and stared at her, absolutely agog. Lilith’s beak dropped open. Crowley even pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead to get a better look. Lilith managed weakly, “Is that…”

“Yes,” said Edith, drawing herself up a little.

Crowley collapsed laughing in his seat, sliding down it boneless nearly to the floor in his mirth, while Lilith flew around the bus chattering and shrieking like a wild thing. Aziraphale’s face burned tomato red. “Surely she isn’t _ so _ ridiculous as all that.”

“No,” Crowley gasped, wiping tears of laughter from his face. Lilith landed on the bar with hanging straps above the seats, still burbling. “No, she’s perfect. I just can’t believe I didn’t see it before. What sort of animal would represent someone full of base desires and indulgences, who can be a bit of a bastard – oh, don’t you start – who gets jealous and petty over the silliest things, and yes, who mends and heals – sometimes a little _ too _ much, in the case of that bike –”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, wrapping his marbled white serpent around his wrists. “That’s what we were forced to conclude, after a century or so of studying the matter. Edith and I swore to each other we’d keep it a secret. And then –” Aziraphale rubbed his cheek against Edith’s scaly neck, and his face warmed again at the look of total fascination on Crowley’s face. “Well. We grew to rather like it.”

“She’s beautiful,” Crowley blurted out, then immediately looked mortified at his own outburst. Aziraphale smiled indulgently. Edith _ was _beautiful, snowy white with a light tan marble, and a soft pale blue ribbon tied in a bow around her neck. He always took good care of his corporation, after all. In answer, Edith rose up from Aziraphale’s arm, looked up at Lilith, and bent her neck just so, making a perch of herself. Lilith fluttered down and rested there, tucking her head under her wing. Crowley watched them so adoringly that Aziraphale ached for all the things that even his serpent-soul had denied himself, all these years.

The bus miraculously stopped at Crowley’s building in Mayfair, and Aziraphale wished the confused driver and his tarsier daimon into alertness for the rest of their journey home, while Crowley just flicked them a tenner. Up in his flat, they settled on the sofa and opened another bottle of wine. “To serpents and sparrows,” said Crowley, raising his glass. Lilith tapped it with her beak, making it ring.

“To the Tree of Souls, and the Tree of Knowledge,” said Aziraphale, clinking his glass to Crowley’s. 

“Angel,” said Crowley delightedly, “that’s _ blasphemy_.” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows and raised Edith, a little, on one arm. They drank. 

“Listen,” Crowley said after their second glass, taking an alarming turn toward the maudlin, “they’re coming for us tomorrow. They’re going to – and there’s so many things I never said. I –”

“Hush,” said Aziraphale. “There’s time. I won’t let them hurt you.” He held Crowley’s gaze fiercely. It wasn’t in his true nature to be a lion, thank the Almighty, but there’s many a serpent mother who will hiss and strike at any invader to her burrow, to defend what is most precious. He took out the last prophecy of Agnes Nutter from his pocket and showed it to Crowley. 

“‘Choose your faces wisely,’” Crowley read. He looked at Lilith and Edith speculatively. “You’ve both been doing that for millennia, haven’t you?”

“True,” Edith said. “But we’re going to have to do a little better than that if we’re to deceive both Hell and Heaven.”

“You great deceiver, you,” Lilith told her fondly, and Edith was going to have to put up with serpent jokes from her for the rest of time, wasn’t she?

“Remember when you were discorporated,”Crowley said slowly, “and you said you wished you could use me as a vessel?” He eyed Edith. “You said we’d probably explode. But we’re from the same stock, aren’t we, angel? Is there any reason we can’t – be each other’s vessels?”

Aziraphale flushed. His corporation, a _ vessel _ for Crowley. But that would mean – “I suppose I don’t see any reason why not. But then we’d go in each other’s places – with each other’s daimons. We’d have to _ hold _ them. Just like we normally do.” Crowley’s stare at Edith suddenly became a full-body line of longing, anchored to her by his bared amber eyes. Aziraphale considered Lilith, perched on the stark black line of Crowley’s arm, and thought how perfectly suited she would look, round and humble brown in the crook of his own arm. “Oh, but that’s it, isn’t it? That’s exactly how it would be accomplished.”

“What?” Crowley croaked. He was abstracted, hypnotized by Edith, a snake charmer in reverse.

“I’ve got no idea how to switch corporations, have you?” said Aziraphale. “No one’s ever done it before. But humans, the way they go on about what it’s like to touch each other’s daimons, how taboo it all is – it’s a kind of soul-merging, isn’t it? ‘Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace.’”

“They call it a violation,” Crowley said roughly. “The worst kind of intrusion.”

“Only if it’s not done properly, dear,” Aziraphale said kindly. He understood – he had seen it done more often in violence and cruelty than in its true spirit of communion, and as a demon, Crowley had likely been exposed to even more of the former than the latter. “I saw David and Jonathan do it the right way. Just to love one another.” Up on the roof of King David’s palace, in the moonlight, not even caring who saw, Jonathan’s fingers plunging into Adara’s fur, ecstatic. Aziraphale’s wings stirred, just remembering it. 

“But you never tried it yourself,” Crowley said. Sprawled against the back of the couch, looking up at him. 

“Of course not,” Aziraphale said, astonished. “Edith doesn’t even show her true nature, let alone suffer anyone to _ touch _ her.”

“All right,” Crowley said, slouching deeper into the sofa. “We’ll figure out some other way to make the switch, then.”

“Oh, _ Crowley_,” Edith said, uncoiling herself from Aziraphale’s arm. “Of course _ you _ could. You _ know _ me.”

Crowley drew up, bolt upright. His wings snapped out, filling the vast empty room with dark magnificence. Lilith looked smaller, more fragile than ever, beside that inky expanse. “Edith,” he said, very formally. Down on one knee, Aziraphale realized, on the floor, with empty hands extended upward. “My pillar of salt. May I?”

“If Aziraphale may have Lilith,” Edith said, “then, dear serpent, _yes_.”

Aziraphale fanned his wings out, and Crowley’s empty sterile flat was full, the air groaning to fit so many feathers. He reached out, and so did Crowley. He enclosed dear Lilith in his hands, and Crowley unwound Edith from his arm. 

There was a glorious moment when Aziraphale and Lilith’s spread wings were one set, angelic and plain brown all at once, and his throat filled with her sparrow’s song, a voice in the choir on the Tree of Souls. At the same time, a black serpent and a white one wound around each other, as entangled as the essences of human and daimon within a soul falling to Earth. 

Then Crowley was within Aziraphale’s corporation entirely, holding Edith aloft, and Aziraphale within Crowley, holding Lilith in his cupped hands. He looked down at her and said, “‘Fear not, therefore: for ye are of more value than many sparrows.’ As if a sparrow isn’t a priceless treasure just as she is.”

Lilith hid her head under her wing, overcome. Aziraphale looked up, and found his own face staring back at him, filled with Crowley’s desire, and that of his past selves. All those Aziraphales past, who _ wanted _ a daimon, wanted to know her true nature, wanted to know Crowley’s and hold it in his hands, just like this. All the Aziraphales he’d been, who’d never denied themselves anything they wanted, except those things they desired most. 

What they were doing was so desperately intimate that it was easy to lean forward and bestow a kiss – for Crowley, and for himself. A kiss of benediction, like Crowley had once pressed to the back of Lilith’s head, wishing he could give it to a young man in his most desperate hour. As they kissed, Lilith’s wings fluttered in Aziraphale’s hands, like a heartbeat.

Aziraphale leaned back and looked at himself. An angel, clad in the full glory of his wings, a white serpent wrapped about his neck. “Oh,” he said. “Gabriel and the others won’t like the look of that at all. The angel and the serpent.”

“Bugger them,” Crowley growled. “How do _ you _ like it?”

“The angel who gave away his sword to protect humanity, and the serpent who gave humans the knowledge to know their true natures.” Aziraphale reached out and touched Edith’s soft scales against his own soft neck with Crowley’s hand. “Why, my dear. I look like someone who did the right thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> I did a deep dive into Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah to write this fic. I wrote a long explanation of all the references [here](https://featherquillpen.tumblr.com/post/187095699602/references-in-choose-your-faces-wisely), but here I have a little more to say about Lilith's and Edith's forms.
> 
> The Tree of Souls as I described it here, complete with choir of sparrows, comes directly from Kabbalah. I picked out the sparrow for Crowley because the song of the sparrows for each soul that descends to Earth really fits with the high value he places on individual human life, higher than any other supernatural entity we meet in Good Omens. Sparrows also represent maternal affection (Psalms 84:3). I definitely also thought of Alexander Pope’s verse “Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, / A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, / Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, / And now a bubble burst, and now a world.”
> 
> According to Talmud, the serpent of Eden represents base desires, what we might now call an “id” – not strictly speaking sexual desire as Christians often read it. It’s also a trickster, of course. But the serpent also represents healing – Moses wrapped a serpent around a staff, much like the caduceus symbol of medicine today, and used it to heal the Israelites.


End file.
